Crisis 1: Funding

Three federal agencies provide the bulk of research and infrastructure funding for archaeology in the USA: the National Science Foundation (NSF); the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH); and the Institute for Museum and Library Sciences (IMLS). These federal agencies receive their funding primarily from the US Congress through appropriations and statutory authorisation. In the case of authorisation, Congress passes laws that create or continue an agency and set its rules and spending limits. Agencies submit budget requests to the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), which helps the President and his staff build a national budget proposal. Congress then reviews the presidential proposal and eventually passes annual spending bills to provide the budgets to the agencies, and the OMB divides and assigns the approved funds, known as appropriations, over specific time frames. While the congressional appropriations are binding, the President can influence how and when the money is spent. In the past two years, the NSF has changed its grant strategy, focusing on fewer and larger grants. Furthermore, the President’s administration can withhold or ‘slow-walk’ funding, recall funding for ‘project reviews’ or deny previously approved second- or third-year funding on existing projects. They can also use the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) to issue priorities that influence which fields receive funding.

The NSF is the largest of the three funding agencies and was targeted by the Trump administration with over 50% cuts for the 2026 and 2027 proposed budgets. Last year, Congress pushed back and funded the NSF with around $9 billion, roughly the historic average; however, archaeology, a funding programme in the Directorate of Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences, was still hit hard. In 2023, archaeology received 0.06% of the NSF’s overall budget (approximately $6 million) but in 2025 at least 16 grants (totalling close to $2 million) were cancelled,Footnote ¹ and the Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement Grant programme, which funds PhD projects, was ‘archived’.Footnote ² About 10% of NSF staff were trimmed as part of the federal worker layoffs initiated by Elon Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE); remaining staff were abruptly informed that the agency was moving and had to quickly vacate their offices and work remotely for several months. While it is too early for exact numbers, John Hawks reports that, as of August 2026, no new NSF grants have been awarded in the archaeology programme in the 2026 fiscal year, despite funds having been appropriated.Footnote ³ Although not official, a Science article from June 2026 reports that many programmes have already been cut, including the Directorate for Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences (and with it the archaeology programme), possibly to fund an upcoming presidential initiative.Footnote ⁴ According to the article, programme directors have been instructed not to request project funding and the new budget proposal for 2027 seeks to officially dissolve the Directorate of Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences.

The situation for the other two large funding agencies, the NEH and IMLS, is even more dire. The IMLS supports the library and museum infrastructure throughout the United States. Its budget (approximately $290 million) provides grants that museums use for curation and collection management infrastructure, didactic materials and exhibitions. In 2025, an executive order by President Trump (Executive Order 14238) cancelled grants, reduced staff and sought to eliminate the IMLS “to the maximum extent consistent with applicable law”. A lawsuit brought by the general attorneys of various states and by groups such as the American Library Association concluded with the ruling that the executive order was unlawful, requiring the reinstatement of funding and the reversal of staff reductions. However, this process lasted over a year, disrupting the operations of over 125 000 libraries and museums around the country, and staffing levels have not yet rebounded.Footnote ⁵ The proposed budget for 2027 includes no funding for the IMLS, seeking to eliminate the agency completely.

At the NEH, 65–85% of staff had their contracts terminated or were placed on leave in April and June 2025 and over 1400 active grants were abruptly cancelled. Ensuing lawsuits also found the mass cancellation of grants and terminations of employment to be unlawful. While the grants should now be funded, the agency is requiring “reinstatement assurances” from project directors as an additional hurdle and funding delay, and only one-third of staff have been rehired.Footnote ⁶ In keeping with presidential priorities, new grant applications for 2026 must have a focus on American exceptionalism and Western Civilisation. However, the proposed budget for 2027 also seeks to eliminate the agency.

While the funding situation is dire, the abrupt changes, lawsuits, terminations, recalls, partial reinstatements, slow-walking and general uncertainty is stressful and demoralising to administrators and researchers at all levels. This funding context clearly severely impacts graduate students and early-career archaeologists, who are scrambling to create low-cost but high-impact projects for their continuing education and career advancement. It also bleeds into the next crisis on the list.

Crisis 2: Higher education and cultural heritage interpretation

Some of the Trump administration’s attacks on higher education, like its legal battles with Harvard, have made international headlines, but others fly under the radar. The nature of the impacts varies by state and is dependent on whether the institution is privately or publicly funded. In my case, I am a tenured professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara. The University of California serves over 300 000 students across 10 campuses in the most populous state in the nation, which happens to have a state government directly opposed to the current president’s administration. It is no secret that President Trump is not a fan of California, and he and his administration have targeted the state through a variety of means: challenging its climate and environmental lawsFootnote ⁷ ; withholding aid and grants for issues such as wildfire and disaster reliefFootnote ⁸ ; and, most recently, threatening to withhold billions from public assistance programmes.Footnote ⁹ Thousands of military troops were also deployed to Los Angeles (and to Chicago and Portland, two other Democratic strongholds) in defiance of existing laws that limit the use of the military for domestic law enforcement. The University of California has been the target of various attempts to freeze federal research grants and in 2025 the federal government demanded a $1 billion settlement over campus protests from the University of California, Los Angeles. In addition, they launched civil rights and antisemitism investigations on multiple campuses, including my own. While lawsuits over the past two years have prevented the withholding of research money or the enforcement of a settlement, the harassment by the federal government has distracted from the central missions of the university, left major campus projects and research infrastructure in limbo, and created an overarching sense of tension, fear and fiscal insecurity.

In addition, the Trump administration’s emphasis on immigration is using Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to target communities in so-called ‘sanctuary states’ like California. Since sanctuary states limit co-operation by local law enforcement with ICE, arrests most often occur in the community—on streets, at workplaces and in raids—and most of those detained have no criminal record.Footnote ¹⁰ The University of California admits and supports students regardless of their immigration status. The University of California, Santa Barbara was the first research university in the Association of American Universities to be designated a Hispanic Serving Institution in 2015, nearly one-third of our students are Hispanic (Chicanx; Latinx) and international students make up around another 13%. Last year, faculty, students and staff were given instructions on what to do should ICE agents come to campusFootnote ¹¹ and similar procedures were provided to primary and secondary schools in the area.Footnote ¹² While a 2025 incident with an agent entering a campus student dormitory remains unverified, ICE agents have been active at a local community college campus.Footnote ¹³ Everyone on campus—staff, faculty, students—has family, friends and neighbours affected by the brutal and inhumane ICE activities in our community. The stress of this ongoing threat is palpable daily.

In other places, the challenges are different. For example, in Florida, a stronghold of President Trump and his administration, education reforms have reshaped higher education. State boards, populated largely by government appointees, govern Florida’s public colleges and universities and have implemented curriculum changes statewide to curb ‘ideology’, including removing sociology courses from offerings.Footnote ¹⁴ In fact, recently passed legislation has given these boards the power to approve or reject course lists for general education requirements at colleges and universities. The tenure system in Florida has been redesigned to include performance evaluations that can lead to contract termination based on ‘poor performance’, undermining the point of tenure to safeguard against politically motivated termination. Faculty are now required to make their syllabi and reading lists publicly available at least 45 days before the first day of class. While this is not necessarily problematic, in the current political climate faculty are rightfully concerned that politically motivated outsiders and political interest groups will scour the syllabi looking for content that does not align with the current political ideology in the state. The assignment of a controversial text could be used to target or intimidate faculty, as has already occurred for some courses. This challenge to academic freedom is also keenly felt on campuses with the use of redacted textbooks. The Florida Board of Governors version of an introduction to sociology textbook deleted entire chapters on race and ethnicity, gender and sexuality, and social stratification.Footnote ¹⁵ Although not making the mainstream news, similar redactions were made in archaeology textbooks to comply with Florida law (Senate Bill 266), which prohibits general education courses from teaching ‘identity politics’.

Museums and historic places are also being scrutinised for ‘ideological’ content. The Smithsonian Institution, and particularly the Museum of American History, has been the focus of intensive investigation. The 160-page report “Saving America’s story: how ideological capture at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of American History erases our heritage”, released on 4 July 2026, resulted in the issue of Executive Order 14416, entitled “Restoring trust in the Smithsonian Institution”, that mandates steps to address President Trump’s claim that the “Smithsonian Institution and the Museum [of American History] cannot be trusted to tell America’s story with honesty and gratitude”.Footnote ¹⁶ Steps will include installing temporary signage in front of the museum to warn visitors about the ‘ideological capture’ at the National Museum of American History, notifying visitors that exhibits should be renovated and directing them to locations and resources for “accurate information regarding America’s history”. The President does not have the authority to directly control or dismiss leadership at the Smithsonian, nor can he dictate the content of exhibitions since the Smithsonian Institution is an independent trust governed by a Board of Regents. However, this board consists of numerous individuals with political positions, including the Supreme Court Chief Justice (John Roberts) and the Vice President (JD Vance), along with a bipartisan group of lawmakers, many of whom the President appoints. He also can influence the operation of the Smithsonian, as he did in August 2026 when he threatened to cut off financial and organisational support for things like artefact loans, procurement assistance and discretionary grants if the Smithsonian did not change its curriculum and leadership. On 8 September 2026, the director of the Smithsonian, Secretary Lonnie Bunch, announced that he will be stepping down at the end of the year.Footnote ¹⁷

While the Smithsonian makes the headlines, similar pressures are being felt in museums throughout the country. President Trump posted on Truth Social on 19 August last year: “The Museums throughout Washington, but all over the Country are, essentially, the last remaining segment of ‘WOKE.’” Elsewhere, such as at National Parks and National Monuments, the President’s Executive Order 14253 “Restoring truth and sanity to American history”Footnote ¹⁸ has already changed interpretive information and requests visitors report any information they find that is “negative about either past or living Americans or that fail[s] to emphasize the beauty, grandeur, and abundance of landscapes and other natural features” (Figure 1).

Figure 1.

Sign posted by order of the Secretary of the Interior in support of Executive Order 14253 (“Restoring truth and sanity to American history”) at Pipestone National Monument, Minnesota (photograph by Katina Lillios).

Concerns about academic freedom, job security and personal safety are widespread in higher education, museums and the public sector, and have had a significant psychological impact. Hundreds of archaeologists working for the federal government at the National Park Service (NPS), National Forest Service (NFS) and the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) were dismissed or forced to retire early during DOGE-initiated restructuring last year.Footnote ¹⁹ Many faculty members are being trolled online or have been captured in politically motivated databases, such as the ‘hit list’ US Senator Ted Cruz developed of over 3400 allegedly left-ideological NSF grants identified through artificial intelligence filters using words such as ‘gender’, ‘climate’ and ‘inequality’.Footnote ²⁰ In higher education, the widespread chilling effect on faculty and administrators also clearly impacts students. While the nature of the concerns may vary between states and between the types of university or college, our capacities to teach and train students in archaeology is very different today than it was three years ago. We are clearly seeing the effects of this in our programmes—in some cases this involves changes to course content, limiting the number of masters or doctoral students due to funding constraints, more limited opportunities for field training, and even fewer prospects for jobs and professional advancement.

Crisis 3: Cultural heritage preservation

The quick demolition of the East Wing of the White House to build President Trump’s desired ballroom was a shock for many, particularly those of us involved in archaeology and cultural heritage preservation. The National Historic Preservation Act, brought into law in 1966, is one of the pillars of federal cultural heritage management. It involves the National Register of Historic Places and the National Register of Historic Landmarks programmes—the official lists of sites, buildings, structures and districts under preservation—and a review process, codified as Section 106, that requires federal agencies to assess and review the effects of any federally funded project on historic properties. To do this, federal agencies consult with the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation (ACHP), the State and Tribal Historic Preservation Offices and the public. The ACHP is an independent federal agency that advises the President and Congress on historic preservation policy and oversees the Section 106 process. The State and Tribal Historic Preservation Offices operate at the state- and tribal level, respectively, to co-ordinate federal compliance and administer local preservation programmes. Although unprecedented, the demolition of the East Wing was not technically illegal since the White House, the US Capitol and the US Supreme Court Building are specifically exempt from this review process (as detailed in Section 107). However, much of the historic core of the Washington area is under protection, so other projects such as the proposed Triumphal Arch in Arlington National Cemetery are subject to this legislation.

Archaeological sites are identified and evaluated under Section 106 for any project that involves federal funding. In the wake of rampant federal construction projects in the 1960s, the law was designed to protect the interests of states and local communities. The process is based on a model of collaboration between federal agencies, local governments, Native American tribes and the public to allow local stakeholders to determine what is a historically significant place. Potential sites are identified before major project commitments are made by a federal agency and consultation involves identifying and resolving potential conflicts among stakeholders early in the project planning. It is estimated that more than 90% of archaeological excavations in the United States are conducted for Section 106 compliance, many by private archaeology contracting firms.Footnote ²¹

In late July 2026 the ACHP approved a proposed complete modification of the regulations for implementing Section 106.Footnote ²² The proposed modifications place decision-making squarely in the federal agency. This would limit what qualifies as a federal project requiring review; federal agencies would then determine how historic properties are identified and what kind of properties should be included; and it would be the federal agencies that decide whether mitigation should take place. The proposed modifications would reduce the role of State and Tribal Historic Preservation Offices to commentators after decisions have already been made, and federal agencies could decide to what extent, if at all, public input is requested. This change puts archaeological and cultural heritage at grave risk. It also means that the funding and implementation structure of 90% of archaeological projects in the United States would be upended.

The proposed changes are unlawful and stand in direct contradiction to the spirit and letter of the National Historic Preservation Act. Furthermore, the modifications were passed in violation of the ACHP’s own procedural guidelines. However, in the context of the current administration, does that matter? It is unclear what the process for enacting this approved proposal will be, but the worst-case scenario is that it becomes an ‘interim final rule’ that could go into effect quickly. The Society for American Archaeology and the Archaeological Institute of America, along with many other professional and historic preservation groups, are watching this closely, activating their memberships and working to inform policymakers of the dangers of the proposed changes. On 27 August 2026, an unprecedented coalition of over 600 public-, private- and non-profit-sector organisations and Tribal governments—representing over five million people—submitted an open letter to Congress to defend Section 106 procedures.Footnote ²³ Yet, given the track record of the federal government in forging ahead and dealing with lawsuits afterwards, the worst-case scenario may still be the most realistic. It is highly likely that the modifications would not hold up in court; however, a year or two of dealing with this change while challenges make their way through the legal system would be devastating to cultural heritage protections and the profession of archaeology in the United States. To say this is an uncertain and stressful situation for many archaeologists is an understatement. The threats to cultural heritage are, however, beginning to galvanise the public into action, like the thousands of protesters who formed a human chain around the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts on 18 September 2026 to protect it from the threat of demolition.Footnote ²⁴

Final thoughts

During our last excavation at the Neolithic (6000–4500 BC) site of Krivače on the Dalmatian coast of Croatia, we were faced with a technical issue: a modern irrigation pipe running through part of the unit that needed to be removed. A Croatian colleague proclaimed that we had a problem. In response, an English colleague stated that it was certainly a challenge. I expressed that it was an opportunity, thinking we could consider expanding the unit in a different direction. We all had a good laugh at this, these national stereotypes playing out in real time. As it turned out, we were able to remove the pipe without issue and expand the unit. The current state of archaeology in the USA is, however, quite dire; it is certainly a problem and a challenge, yet it is difficult for me, despite my ‘unnatural optimism’, to see an opportunity. The incertitude is demoralising and depressing. I can only hope that upcoming elections shift the tone and start us down a different path. My worry is that the disruption and destruction of so many institutions and programmes is so vast that rebuilding will take a long time and there will be long-lasting impacts that go well beyond the current political context.

In this precarious situation, however, we see resistance on a daily basis that is often not reported in the media, including the small but mighty acts of protesting and writing letters to politicians; supporting students dealing with ICE; teaching the importance of diversity, equity and inclusion; mentoring graduate students and early-career scholars; working with local and indigenous communities and stakeholders; researching ‘controversial’ topics like inequality, climate change and gender; and fighting for our institutions in small and large ways. Support from colleagues abroad helps us navigate these challenging times: helping students and early-career scholars access data, sites or collections for their research; including us in grant-funding applications; and creating strategic partnerships with departments, museums and other institutions abroad.

As archaeologists we spend much of our day thinking about time and exploring other ways of living captured within the archaeological record. Despite all this time travel, we do not know what the future holds. Archaeologists in the USA need to not only work hard to deter or mitigate these many crises, we also need to continue to promote archaeology with the public. Only then might we have a chance of creating some new opportunities when it is time to rebuild.